I Was Fine With My Divorce — Until I Befriended My Ex's New Wife

After almost 20 years since her marriage ended, the last thing she expected was this Facebook message.

Mar 21, 2016

The message began, "Don't know if you remember me, I'm Jonathan's wife." I'd only met her once, talked to her maybe twice, and that was more than a decade ago, but I remembered her. I also remembered that there was a time when her self-description applied to me. I hadn't been Jonathan's wife for almost 20 years. I am very happily someone else's wife. But still. Like a long-unused childhood nickname, my ears pricked to the phrase. The few and brief interactions I'd had with this woman were perfectly pleasant, so there was no need to be wary, but, of course, I was. Anything related to my ex-husband makes me tread lightly.

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Turns out, caution was not required. Her brief Facebook message was very kind. She had read an essay I wrote, enjoyed it, wanted to let me know. How sweet, what a nice thing to do. She congratulated me on my "writing career." I got the sense that she'd looked me up. Of course. Isn't that one of the things this digital age allows us to do?

I'd tried it myself from time to time — looking up my ex-husband that is, not his wife. The demise of our marriage was not terribly acrimonious, but neither was it friendly. We did not stay in touch and we did not have mutual friends. My ex also did not leave any kind of a Google trail. So just about the only information I had about his life after me, after us, were the bits and pieces I'd been told when he was about to marry the woman now writing to me. This is what I'd heard: my ex, about a year after telling me he not only didn't want to be married to me, but he also didn't want to be married at all, was getting married again. To a woman 14 years his junior. Who was fresh out of college. They'd been dating something like six months. She was pregnant. Well, we scoffed smugly, we all knew how that was going to turn out.

Only that's not how it turned out. They were still together. Her initial missive turned into a back and forth of several light notes and a Facebook friending. Now, I had a legit if limited means to snoop. I could see for myself some of the information I'd picked up, somewhat unwillingly, from the occasional holiday cards my former mother-in-law sent. The marriage had endured. There were two children, teenagers now. Dog, cat, a horse and chickens, even. An old farmhouse, apparently in need of the usual constant repairs. An occasional, good natured domestic complaint popped up in a post from time to time.

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[pullquote]My ex, about a year after telling me he not only didn't want to be married to me, but he also didn't want to be married at all, was getting married again.[/pullquote]

Unexpectedly, all this visual evidence of my ex's current life chafed at me a bit. Not because I was jealous — no, I am truly, deeply fulfilled and contented in my own remarriage and life. Not because I wish him or her ill, because I don't. There was no affair. All proceeded fairly. We both moved on. What then did I find surprising? What, after all, was I expecting?

Slowly, it dawned on me. What I found so puzzling was simply how much his new life resembled our old life. We'd had a battered farmhouse in need of constant repairs, too. Not far from where he now lived, in fact. She and I favored a similar breed of dogs. A glimpse of their dining room table and chairs brought back memories; they'd once been in my house. He apparently continued to do, beautifully, the work he'd always done. She was working at a publication that had once given me an award.

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I chastised myself for solipsism. But my confused familiarity was not mere narcissism. The little shocks of recognition I experienced were forcing a different kind of confrontation within myself. My discomfort was not with his life per se, but with the fact that his current life made the narrative I'd told about the whys and hows of our break up patently untrue.

My little story went something like this: We'd met in our mid 20s, fell decidedly in love, shared dreams for a picturesque life together. We set out to make those dreams come true. We bought and fixed up a 100-year-old farmhouse in the countryside. We put in gardens and got dogs and cats. I sidestepped my career path and joined him in his business. And then, after eight years together, he said he didn't want that life anymore. It wasn't just that he didn't want to be married to me, he said, it was that he didn't want to be married at all. He wanted to be alone. Yet, within short order, he re-created, expanded, and apparently successfully maintained the life I thought he was rejecting.

This tidy tale, I realized, was important to me because it allowed me to hold onto the notion that he was the one who left me. And this is true. He is the one who said the words, "I don't want to be married anymore." I was the one who said the words, "I want this marriage to work."

However, I was also the one who said things like, "I want to get a tattoo." "I want to get a motorcycle." "I'm going to take some classes." "I want to spend more time on my writing." "I want us to spend more time together." "I want to see more, do more, travel more, have a party, go to a show." "I want you to be different with me." Maybe he said the words that ultimately ended our marriage. But seeing what he made of his life since then made me squirm with a truth I have mostly been able to avoid: I was the one who helped put those words in his mouth.

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When I was getting divorced, the first of my peers to do so, I got an odd sense of consolation from a friend who made this observation: "A lot of people stay together simply due to lack of imagination." I recognized even then that part of my problem, which became part of our marriage's problem, was that I had begun to imagine a life that was maybe more, maybe better, but mostly just different from what I had. For whatever reason or reasons, my first marriage was not the context within which I could bring those rough longings to more complete form.

When I started dating the man who is now my husband, we both said that our first marriages were not that bad. Better than some. Yet, we had wanted more. We wanted more from our spouses, but mostly we wanted more from ourselves, from our lives. I never got the tattoo and the motorcycle is long gone, but I now have so many of the things I imagined and also so many things I didn't dare conjure back then. All this thinking about "more" reminded of something William S. Burroughs reportedly said: "I became addicted because I wanted more." He became addicted; I guess I became divorced. After all, "more" always extracts its price.

[pullquote]Seeing what he made of his life made me squirm with a truth I have mostly been able to avoid: I was the one who helped put those words in his mouth.[/pullquote]

And what did my ex-husband become? I can't know and I can't say with any authority. The slender window of social media shows me that his wife seems to be a woman with a robust and energetic connection to her children and community. Her posts reveal a charming and self-deprecating wit; affection lards her occasional, small teasings of her husband. She shows a generous spirit. For instance, she told me she'd shown my essay, the one that caused her to write to me, to her (formerly my) husband. She said he was "happy for me."

Happy for me. I wonder if I can return the favor. In the years since our breakup, I honestly have not had enough information to know whether I could be, should be, happy for him. But now? Now I can say with confidence, yes, I'm happy for him. And also happy for her, for them together. Happy he found his own version of "more."

Laurel Saville is an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction. Her forthcoming novel NORTH OF HERE will be published in March by Lake Union.

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